Glossary and abbreviations

Activation market: Flexibility market where the assets are dispatched for the period covered by a trade.

Asset: In this context, an asset represents a physical or virtual device which has power characteristics that can be controlled, thus providing flexibility. Typically, assets are either consumers (e.g. heating systems, factories) or producers (e.g. renewable energy sources or traditional power plants), while some assets (e.g. batteries) can both produce and consume.

Baseline: The forecasted aggregated consumption/production of an asset portfolio (see portfolio) during a defined time period.

DSO: Distribution System Operator, the entity responsible for operating a electrical grid.

Fill-and-kill: Type of order that is immediately matched. The order is killed and instantly removed after matching, whether it is matched fully, partially or not at all. Available in NODES continuous market. Commonly abbreviated as FaK. Also known as Immediate-or-Cancel (IoC).

Fill-or-kill: Type of order that is immediately matched. The order is either matched in full and then killed, or else it is killed and instantly removed. No partial matching is allowed. Available in NODES continuous market. Commonly abbreviated as FoK.

FlexibilityZone Set of several portfolios where the DSO defines specific flexibility needs and sensitivities. A flexibility zone does not necessarily correspond to a physical zone of the electrical grid.

FMO: Flexible Market Operator, the operator of the platform hosting a market on which participants can trade flexibility.

FSP: Flexibility Service Provider, an entity offering flexible assets into a market.

GridNode: Physical node of the electrical grid to which an asset portfolio is connected and on which trading happens.

Interpolated orders: Order with a non-uniform price, i.e. instead of having one single price independently of the accepted part of the order, the price is evolving with the quantity accepted. Available on N-Side auction market.

Limit price: For buy orders, this is the upper limit of what the buyer is willing to pay. For a sell order, this is the lower limit of what the seller is willing to accept. See “Market price”.

Market price: For buy orders, this means that the buyer will is willing to pay the current market sell price. For sell orders, this means that the seller is willing to sell at the current market buy price.

MeterReading: Registration of the actual power consumed/produced by an asset

Order: Flexibility order placed on a market. The order can be either “Buy” in case the market participant wants to procure flexibility or “Sell” in case the market participant wants to offer flexibility.

PayAsBid: This is a market rule stating that the price at which trade between two orders will occur is the proposed price of the first order placed on the platform.

PayAsCleared: This is a market rule stating that the price at which a trade will occur is the one of the market equilibrium (determined by the buy and sell curves).

Portfolio: A portfolio represents one or more assets (aggregated) that can participate in a flexibility market, e.g. batteries, dispatchable generators, etc.

QuantityType: What is traded on a market / in an order. Possible values are ActivePower, ReactivePower, Energy, Capacity.

Reservation Market: Flexibility market in which participants offer the reservation of their flexibility (possibly weeks or years in advance depending on market rules) before actual dispatching. The actual dispatching can be done outside the market or in a consecutive activation market.

Trade: A trade either between two participants of a market, or between one participant and the FMO. A trade is always the result of two or more orders being matched.

Categorization of orders

Orders can be categorized along several axes. Some categorizations follow directly from the market, while other can vary between orders with the same market.

QuantityType: Some orders are for adjusting active power supply, some are for energy etc. Each market operates in one quantity type.

Quantity: Some orders are can be matched-in-part, and some orders need to be fully “filled”. This is deduced from the minimumAcceptanceQuantity. Possible categorizations are Curtailable (minimumAcceptanceQuantity < Quantity) and AllOrNothing (minimumAcceptanceQuantity == Quantity)

PriceCurve: Some orders have a fixed price regardless of quantity, while some orders have price depending on quantity bought (using the piecewise linear price curve concept). Possible categorizations are FixedPrice or VariablePrice.

Period: Some orders needs to be matched for the whole period stated in the order (e.g. 1300-1800), while other orders can be divided into time-slots and some of them met (e.g. buying 1300-1500 of an order that has period 1300-1800). Possible categorizations are SingleSlot (must match the whole period) or MultiSlot (one can match/buy parts of the period).

FillType: Depending on the fill type, some orders are killed immediately after matching, while some can remain in the market. Possible categorizations are Normal (remains in market), FillOrKill, FillAndKill.

PriceType: Some orders have a fixed limit on how high (for buy orders) or low (for sell orders) the price can be. Other orders will buy/sell at the current market price. Possible categorizations are: Limit, Market.

Status of items

Each of the items within an FMO can have different statuses at different stages in their lifecycle. Not all status are relevant for all items. Each FMO can have limitations on allowed statuses, depending on entity types and other factors (e.g. market rules).

However, each of the statuses have the same meaning across different FMOs:

Received: The item has been received but not yet processed. If the response includes a link or id, the status of the item can be polled at a later time.

Pending: The item has been received, but is pending approval from an external system, either manual or automatic.

Rejected: The item has been received and stored, but rejected. The rejection can be automatic or manual, by external partners or by the FMO, and can possibly be revoked.

Active: The item is now active in the FMO system. Note that for orders in a continuous market, this means that the order in financial terms also is referred to as passive, meaning that it is lying in the system, awaiting possible future matches.

Inactive: The item has manually or automatically been marked as not operational. The status might be changed at a later time.

Completed: The item has completed it lifecycle and is no longer active. An example of this is an order that has been fully matched.

Deleted: The item has been deleted, manually or automatically, and is no longer active.

Completion Type

In addition to Status, an extra field (CompletionType) is available for orders. It exposes extra information regarding what caused the order to be completed. The usage is dependent on the FMO and it will not be set for statuses other than Completed.

The possible values are:

Filled: The order has been traded in full.

Killed: The order was set up as either FillAndKill or FillOrKill, and was killed after being processed.

Expired: The order has come to the end of the period of validity and still had quantity remaining.

Cancelled: The order was explicitly cancelled.